: Re: what techniques or approaches can I use to explore distasteful concepts while also making them necessary? In my story democracy crumbles in a nation, replaced by a powerful dictatorship. Our world

@Gonzalez219

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Successful in the sense that it is the only viable solution. In this world, democracy has failed as an institution, with the various powers unable to come together in unity and oppose the invaders.

That seems highly improbable; it seems you are saying that people that believe in "democracy" would rather die by alien invasion than fight. In WW II, millions of men and women from democracies went to fight totalitarianism before it reached their lands. It isn't like "democracy" is incapable of ordering people into the armies and into battle under threat of death, and it isn't like "democracy" means people are unwilling to sacrifice all their comforts in the face of an existential threat.

Democracy only means the people decide their fate, and faced with extinction they will vote to fight like hell and elect leaders and give them breathtaking powers to do just that.

If anything, the risk of the existential threat will make citizens accede to what is effectively totalitarian rule, at least long enough to ensure their own survival: America and the UK did that in WW II, with forced drafts, forced realignment of commercial companies to military providers, forced rationing for the war effort, and all sorts of mandates and powers allowed to the politicians and military.

that the only way to push back against an elder god's forces is to sacrifice our ideals, (freedom, justice, civil rights, etc,) for safety.

Freedom and civil rights and even "justice" will be sacrificed in a democracy if there truly is an existential threat; at least to the extent it can be shown to matter to fight. That is real human psychology and it has played out many times in otherwise free societies.

It is generally not necessary to sacrifice all freedoms, say like dating whom you choose, or getting together to play Gin Rummy, or outlawing cursing. It would be near impossible to justify such social controls as benefiting the war.

You are free to write it how you want, but the premise sounds completely implausible to me. Reducing freedoms in the face of an existential emergency is plausible; making actual totalitarianism the "best" option is not, and I see no fictional way to make it remotely plausible.

I am writing a response to help you avoid writing a story that I don't think will work.

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